


roads which move

by frettedhilt



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Adventure, Boat Trip Fic, Canon-Typical Violence, Established Relationship, M/M, Mentions of Light Bondage, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Sera/Female Cadash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-13
Updated: 2016-09-13
Packaged: 2018-08-14 13:41:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,495
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8016205
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/frettedhilt/pseuds/frettedhilt
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After getting word of possible Venatori activity in the remote Nahashin Marshes of Orlais, the Inquisition travels there to track down the suspected agents. Memories stir in the harsh landscape, leading the Iron Bull and Dorian to discoveries about themselves and their relationship.</p>
            </blockquote>





	roads which move

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to [sunspeared](http://archiveofourown.org/users/sunspeared) for the betaing & advice.
> 
> You can find the art done by [zabrakqueen](http://zabrakqueen.tumblr.com) for this fic [here](http://zabrakqueen.tumblr.com/post/150359413787/adoribull-minibang-illustrations-for)!

The Iron Bull brought the knuckles of one hand down hard on a wooden post in the Skyhold training yard. His attention caught by the sound, Krem stepped out of the way of a shield strike from one of Cullen’s recruits, and nodded when the Bull tipped his horns towards the main hall. It wasn’t often he went up there this time of day, but the message in his other hand requested his presence in Josephine’s office, just delivered by one of Leliana’s runners. Her letters curled tightly as always with their secrets, and the flaky wax seal crumbled into the folds of the paper when he broke it.

The early spring days so far were opening crisp-cool, growing warm only late in the day. Inside, the weak morning sun hadn’t touched the dark corners and stone walls. Red and Cadash were already there, and Josephine held court from her seat behind her desk, sitting straight with her pen in hand.

She gestured to the large chair that had been pulled over.

“Bull, ever take any jobs in the Nahashin Marshes?” Cadash asked. She leaned against the wall by the window, back protected and eyes sharp, and with that pinch to her brow she got after hours around the war table. It’d only grown worse since Adamant and Halamshiral.

He rubbed the side of his neck, and nodded. “Once or twice. Tracked down a group of river bandits there for some Orlesian noble.”

One of his first jobs in Orlais, not long after he came south—back when he was working with Fisher. Still exhausted and feeling rubbed raw, he’d been settling into a new purpose in a new country. Writing his meticulous reports for Par Vollen at night. The job paid crap, from what he remembered, and Fisher kept dragging his feet to extract more money so they ended up spending weeks there. In villages that were nothing specks on a map in a forgotten part of the empire most nobles wouldn’t stop to take a shit in, he would wake up every morning, check the shadows, and remember he was the Iron Bull now.

Red paced a couple steps at the side of Josephine desk, her hands behind her back. She narrowed her eyes. “I’ve sent scouts but have limited contacts in the area. From the reports I have received, we suspect Venatori infiltrators in some of the villages.”

Cadash looked at her. “To what purpose?”

“That we don’t know.” Josephine scratched the nib of her pen across the rough paper in front of her. “The original message came through Val Royeaux, from a minor house of nobility near Val Foret. There was word of some disruption in Nahashin.”

“What kind of disruption?” the Bull asked.

“A village at the edge of the marshes which served as a small trading post was burned. The locals fled.”

“I’ll have my agents start there,” Red said.

“No,” Cadash said. “I think I should go myself,”

Red huffed out a breath. “Now? Inquisitor, do you really think that wise? We’re so close to Corypheus.”

“I want to do this.”

“I have people there right now. It’s not necessary when we have other concerns, and preparations to be made which are more pressing—”

“Leliana,” Josephine interrupted, pinprick light.

In response, she made a frustrated noise, her shoulders slumping. Josephine’s upper body turned, followed her.

“But you’re right that it’s good place to start,” Cadash said, her tone conciliatory. “Try to find out if it’s connected to the Venatori. Will the locals speak with me?”

“Their settlements are isolated, not always easy to find—but the marshfolk are pretty open people,” the Bull said.

“So we’ll go make some friends. You in?”

“Yeah, I’m there, boss.”

Her answering grin was a feral lightning flash, and then gone.

“That friendliness may be the very thing putting them at risk to the Venatori,” Josephine said, her attention back to Cadash. “Even though they consider themselves Orlesian in some ways, they are first Nahashin marshfolk. They have their own customs, their own legends, and their own ways of looking at the world.”

“Some discretion might do well,” Red said. “We don’t need them to feel we’re a threat.”

“They won’t. I may not even say we are with the Inquisition,” Cadash said. “Not until I get a better read on the situation.”

“That might be wise.”

“I’ll bring Bull and Sera. And I want Dorian there too.”

“We’ll ask Cassandra to travel with you part of the way. After what happened at the Winter Palace, you know Empress Celene has been generous with resources. It would help to have someone close to there,” Leliana said. “We can make sure a supply line is set up for you, if necessary.”

“Let her know and make the preparations. We’ll leave at daybreak,” Cadash said, the last bit directed at the Bull.

————

From Val Royeaux, it took three hard days on mounts, first traveling along the Imperial Highway and then following a river, to reach the border of the marshes. There, the land split into softness and water at the edges of the roughened road, and mist rose from the streams visible beyond the lonely clumps of trees scattered across the terrain. The streaky clouds and a heaviness in the air promised an afternoon storm, and even though the landscape felt quiet, the Iron Bull suspected there was life beyond they couldn’t see yet.

He felt his horse’s tension through the reins, and he loosened his grip and placed a soothing hand on her mane. In his peripheral vision, he saw Dorian pull his own horse closer to Sera, away from the margin of the road.

“At least this place smells a bit less like rotting corpse than the Fallow Mire,” Dorian said to Cadash. “You always takes us to the nicest of swamps, don’t you?”

She snorted and shook her head. She was as watchful as she ever was, dark hair pulled back severely and sword at her side. It was that—the way she measured the world, the Bull first read in her face, first recognized in her.

Her hand was gloved, and none of them wore or carried anything with Inquisition heraldry on it.

“That almost wasn’t a complaint, big guy.”

“Yes, well—almost. I didn’t say it smelled _good_ ,” Dorian said. “And my boots are still wet, after all.”

“There you go.”

“How then?” Sera asked. “Only time you’ve got off your horse was to piss. Oh no, wait.” She paused, looking him up and down. “Like pissing off a roof.”

“What?”

“It’s a thing people say, innit?”

“No, it’s not.”

She sighed. “It’s like this, yeah? Couple years back, I was spending time in Montsimmard, having a bit of fun. So one night, I get stuck on this roof, waiting for some lordy to leave. Except I’m up there for _hours_. And where I’m perched is steep, like this.” She drew a diagonal line in the air with her finger.

“It’s really not necessary—”

“Hold on, I’m not done yet. So I piss off the roof onto the fancy marble steps. Lordy even walks right through it when he goes, funny, that. Only thing is, when I climb down from a balcony to go, I jump and land right in it. Slip on my arse even.”

“Is there a point to this story?” Dorian asked.

“So you have to piss off the roof, right? And so you might end up in your own piss—we all get it in our shoe sometimes, yeah?”

The Bull wasn’t sure if she was commiserating or trying to impart wisdom.

“Uh. No. I don’t think—right,” he said. The Bull’s eye went to his, and he could see the smile pulling at the corners of Dorian’s mouth. “Thank you, Sera.”

“But still, how is that _a thing people say_?” Cadash asked.

“Bet you’ll say it from now on,” Sera said, grinning at her. “You’re people.”

There was barely a trace of the underlying sulfur and peat odor of the lakes and springs deeper in the marshes, so they could smell the burned houses before the village came into view. It was across a larger basin into which a stream emptied to create a lake, ringed in tall rushes and swamp grasses. The road narrowed into a path around it, and they followed to the charred frames of what were once a half-dozen two and three room cottages. The ground was stamped gray with ash.

“Shite, what a mess,” Sera said.

A pair of birds took off from the busted roof of the closest house as they dismounted.

Blackened debris had been pulled from the homes and littered across the ground, detritus of the villagers’ lives, and framed by a few boot prints pressed into the mud. Cadash drew her sword and crouched down. “I wonder who left these.”

The Bull hummed. “Hard to say. Could be villagers trying to save things. Could be whoever set the fires.”

“Where is everyone? After the fire, where did they go?” Sera asked.

Dorian had gone to poke around inside one of the houses, one that didn’t look like it was in imminent danger of collapsing. He stepped out and shook his head. “There’s nothing that points to what the Venatori were looking for, or if it even was the Venatori.”

“No, but look,” Cadash said.

She pointed across the clearing to a large tree. At its base, there a few wooden containers filled with growing cooking herbs, but her attention was on an arrow stuck in the trunk. Tied to shaf braided rope of multicolored cloth, in light blue and yellow and teal.

“What is that?”

Sera went and untied it from the arrow, holding an end in each hand and stretching it out. “Some kind of marker?”

“Or a message to someone,” Dorian said.

“I don’t have a good feeling, boss,” the Bull said as Cadash stood up. It had been bothering him all day; nothing more than a twitch to his muscles, an unsettled feeling that was too familiar. It was the cold wet and the burning still on the air, like that moment on the Storm Coast—more than two months past now, maybe closer to three—and the slip of other memories even older underneath.

“Me neither. We need to find someone who can tell us what happened.”

A low roll of thunder sounded in the distance. They needed to head further into the marshes and hope to pick up a trail to follow.

————

Rain threatened as the day stretched on, but never materialized as more than a drizzle coming down onto their heads as the mist grew thicker and the track muddier. It was several more hours before they came to a fork in the road by a shallow lagoon, and Cadash made the decision for them to split up, to scout forward on each path by foot before meeting back together. They secured the mounts in a copse where there was grasses to graze on and would be protected if the weather turned worse.

Sera and Cadash took one direction; the Bull and Dorian took the other.

Their path veered sharply to the right, separated from the rest of the marsh by black ash and tamarack trees. It was well-traveled, the earth packed down by those who had come before them, but any distinct footprints from the village were long gone. The only traces left were a faint depression from the heel of a boot and something round, like a walking stick.

Dorian pointed to the treeline to the north. A thin wisp could be seen against the green before melting into matching the sky. “Smoke?”

He could see the damp in Dorian’s hair from the mist, the shine on his skin. His sleeve brushed the Bull’s arm.

“Yeah,” the Bull said. “Could be a campfire.”

He estimated it was about a quarter hour walk from where they were. They still had time before the sun started to set.

“We should get off the road,” Dorian said. “See if we can cut across there and get closer.”

They went into the marsh, where the trees weren’t tall but grew in clusters that provided cover, and the grasses came up past their thighs. The ground under their feet sank with their steps, the feel of somewhere that flooded regularly and only dried out a few times a year. Neither of them spoke, just pressed forward carefully.

He could smell it again now, the smoke in the air.

They came to a stream with trampled blood lotus on the edge. On the opposite bank, there was a small ridge they couldn’t see over, but the Bull could hear someone moving around above, a murmur of a voice nearly lost with sound of the water. They took three large steps over the shallows to get to the ridge wall of dirt and volcanic rock. It looked like it’d be easier to climb higher but popping over a ridge without knowing what they walking into could be a risky thing to do, and not one the Bull wanted to take. They tucked themselves to it, backs against the wall and their shoulders pressed together.

No more conversation went on above them, but there were footsteps and a rhythmic scraping. It sounded like a knife being sharpened.

Next to him, Dorian tipped his head back, looked to the sky, and the Bull considered the line of his jaw, his chin, his throat, watched as it moved when he inhaled. His breath was controlled but there was an anxiety there, too, in the pace and length of each one.

The easiest tell in the world, the changes in a person’s breathing that indicated fear or excitement; something even the youngest in Ben-Hassrath training learned, and the Bull was even better than most. It was simple to listen a lover’s breath and adjust accordingly. Without thought. Like a tautology, he did it because that was what he did—what his purpose was, what his training told him.

But this was a different thing, the new ways he was familiar with Dorian’s breathing. It was the shades and variations that came with a knowledge of a person, his sweat and breath and smiles. How it made his old guesses feel fumbling. He’d fucked a lot of people, learned a lot of people. But not like this fascination his body had with Dorian’s.

He angled himself towards him, towards his noisy heartbeat, the soft vulnerable pulse along his throat. He watched as Dorian swayed back and then closer in response, as though seeking more sure knowledge of his presence, instinctual. He took his own unsteady breath.

The noise of metal on stone slowed and went fainter; the sound drawing out.

Touching Dorian’s shoulder, he slowly slid his hand across his collarbone. He could feel the warmth of his skin through the silk and leather armor, and when he stroked his thumb along Dorian’s sternum, once, and then again—his breath went a fraction more even, his shoulders dropping. The Bull felt that in his chest.

The clouds overhead made Dorian’s eyes look very grey. He held, and waited.

It went quiet, and then there was the murmur of voices. The Bull could only catch isolated phrases, spoken in Common with a smattering of Orlesian. There was nothing Tevinter in either accent or speech patterns, but their tone stood out, low and fearful. He heard the words _up marsh_ and _burned to the ground_ and finally, more urgent than what came before, _missing._

Dorian raised his eyebrows at the Bull, and he tilted his head back the way they came. Scaring these people more with their unexpected appearance wouldn’t help. The sun was on the horizon and they needed to find Cadash.

————

Dark was falling as they made their way back to the road and where they tied off their horses.

“What do you think?” Dorian asked.

“I don’t know. They were spooked.”

“Cadash needs to talk to them.”

“Yeah, but these people aren’t from the village. It might’ve been their friends or families or maybe they just heard talk about it,” the Bull said. “Talk might be the worse.”

“I don’t think marsh rumors will be much use to us,” Dorian said.

“Sometimes they are. But it’s worse in other ways, too.”

Dorian made an inquiring noise.

“You can fill in the details of talk like that yourself. People who otherwise would open their doors to any traveler that passed through will keep them locked,” he said. “If they’re scared like that, they’re unpredictable. Things can go to crap fast.” It was a lesson written in experience.

“They won’t trust us. The Venatori have made certain of that.” It was full of cutting disdain, the way Dorian always sounded when Vints were ruining lives.

The Bull shrugged. “Or they could run before we even get close.”

“Things can’t ever be simple,” he said, sighing.

“Best thing we can do? Make noise, let them see our faces, and decide for themselves.”

He could feel Dorian glance at him. The words drifted between them.

Back at the horses, Sera was tending a small fire and Cadash was butchering a wild rabbit when they got there, blood on her hands. They told Cadash about what they’d seen and heard after they ate, her stone-faced and thoughtful. Their sleep that night was an uneasy few hours.

————

It was late morning when they saw the new footprints, the first signs of someone on the path ahead of them. Cadash held an arm, signaled for them to dismount and walk their horses.

At the sound of voices, she unsheathed her blade and let it hit against the sweet rushes at the edge of the path as she walked. The Bull let his footfalls go heavier, and Sera laughed as her horse pulled on his lead-rope to nose at her shoulder and back, curious about what was inside her pack.

When they rounded the next bend, two humans with knives stood in the path and one more, bow in hand, in the tall grasses to their left. They were dressed in the belted tunics laced at the collar and leather leggings common to Orlesian peasants, but dyed the bright colors the Bull remembered from his last trip here to the marshes.

“You’ve been following us, yes,” one of them said, her curled black hair braided and pinned to her head. “Are you merchants?”

The Bull heard the creak of the bow being drawn back. He kept his body still and unthreatening as possible. He didn’t want an arrow in his side and it only took jumpy, itchy fingers to let one fly. Sera had an eye on it too—he could tell in the shift and flex of her own hands next to him—but she wouldn’t be able to stop it.

Cadash shook her head, sheathed her sword. “No, not merchants. We just came across those burned houses to the south.”

“What do you know of it?”

“Nothing, except it looked like someone might need some help.” Cadash held out her empty hands.

The young woman exchanged a glance with the man next to her. He was taller and had a scar across his cheek, but their family resemblance was strong. They both lowered their knives.

“We won’t raise them again without cause,” she said. “Who are you?’

Now was often the moment Cadash would show her hand—literal and whatever else, announce herself as Inquisitor, ask what she can do, but the Bull felt her hesitation as she studied them. The woman transferred her weight from foot to foot, unsettled. The man’s grip on his knife was still white-knuckle tight where he held it as his side.

“My name is Cadash,” she started slowly. “We’re with a merc company taking jobs north up to Montfort and we’ve found ourselves near the marshes these last few days.”

“We have no coin to pay mercenaries.” There was a pause there.

Cadash pretended to think on this. The Bull could see the smuggler who facilitated black market sales all across the Free Marches and Nevarra in this version of her, in the stillness of her and the twist of her lie. Her ability to tell falsehoods with absolute conviction, the muscles of her face not moving. “That’s all right. Could use a place to bunk down and a hot meal,” she said.

“What do you think, Bull?”

“Sounds good, boss,” he said, his words kept languid, so they didn’t make waves as the fell.

“And then maybe you can decide if you want our help,” Cadash said, and the Bull watched as the silent woman in the grass put the bow on her back, and picked up her walking stick.

The other young woman nodded once. “Of course. My name is Emilie, and this is my brother. And our cousin Miranah.” She finally sheathed her knife completely. “Come, there is a place not far from here. We’ll take you.”

————

They were taken straight off the path into wetter areas, around ponds and across channels bridged with narrow planks, concealing their tracks and confusing their trail. It made sure it wouldn’t be easy to backtrack, or be followed to their destination.

When they got there, it wasn’t a village but a large farmstead next to one of the wider rivers that snaked through the marshes and fed the lakes, with a collection of buildings: a raised one-story house, a small barn, and a stone path to collection of outbuildings, with rows of well-tended gardens between them. On the water, two fishing boats were tethered to a wooden dock.

Emilie had their mounts taken to the barn by a young stable hand and they were shown into the larger house, leaving their wet boots on the stone steps out front. The main room was big but very simply furnished, with a single table and a few chairs, and large rug by the fire. A colorful tapestry hung on the wall—woven in light blue, yellow, and teal.

After pouring them tea from a pot on the banked fire, she offered them bread and pieces of sharp cheese. “We’ll be cooking a meal soon, but for now.”

Sera took a sip and pulled a face as she bit into the cheese. “Bit like arse,” she muttered. It was Sera-quiet and loud in the room.

He heard Dorian exhale a little groan.

Cadash shot her a dark look, but Emilie just made a little stifled noise into the back of her hand. And then pressed a laugh there.

“People not from around here don’t usually like our cheese,” she said. “It has a—local taste.”

“Huh.” Sera inspected the piece in her hand. “Like how the marsh smells.”

Emilie laughed again, full-throated this time, and the Bull could tell she’d been put at ease.

“Your accents aren’t Orlesian, so you were a surprise. Usually out here, we get mostly merchant types from Val Royeaux and places like that, traveling towards Serault.”

Cadash reached into her pack and pulled out the braided cloth. “We found this.” She nodded her head towards the wall.

Emilie sighed and took it from her. “Yes, this is ours. Miranah left it there a few days ago when we first discovered it like that. It was so anyone looking for help would know we were nearby,” she said. “My mother makes this dye. It’s a way we in the marsh identify ourselves.”

“How’s that?”

She mimed tying the rope around something. “We trade up and down the marsh, you see? So the goods from here—dyed cloth and dried fish, mostly, it’s always marked with these colors. Not every marsh folk who sees this would know, but enough.”

“Have you seen anyone from that village, since the fires?” Dorian asked.

“Only once,” she said. “They were traveling to a village where they have family. They also told us to be careful. To look out.”

“Look out for what?” Cadash asked.

Emilie was silent for a moment, turning her cup in her hands. “They came in the middle of the night, set the fires, and then in the confusion, they took...I don’t know, valuables of some kind, some papers—” She glanced at the door, trailing off.

“What else?”

“A young woman from there was gone the next morning. They didn’t know if she went after them—it was from her family the papers were stolen—or something worse.”

“No word from her?” the Bull asked.

“No. There’s been murmurs from other local marshfolk, rumors of a party of strangers going north. But that’s all.”

Cadash nodded. “If we wanted to go to where those villagers were heading, how do we get there?”

“It’s not an easy trip on horseback or foot. You’d have to cross several rivers and go around some large lakes. It’s best to go by boat.”

“Oh, _lovely_ ,” Dorian said, mouth pulled down. “Just what this trip needed.”

————

That evening, their hosts cooked over an open fire pit in the center of the yard, roasting small fish and boiling a soup of vegetables, herbs, and the discarded trimmings from the fish.

The atmosphere was strained, with the tap of the metal spoon on the side of the pot clanging sharp and discordant around the fire. Smiles came too slow and long pauses hung between them as Emilie and her family served the meal.

The sun set in pink streaks behind the clouds.

After they were done eating, Emilie passed around a bottle of Orlesian wine, the taste tart with fruit and the grasses of the Heartlands. The Bull watched as Dorian turned towards her.

“Has there been anyone from Tevinter in the area recently?”

She looked at him over her glass. “You’re Tevinter, yes?”

“I am,” Dorian said.

“No, sorry. I know nothing of anyone from there,” she said.

He gave a wry smile; his eyes raised to meet the the Bull’s briefly. There was wine shining on his bottom lip. He looked back to her. “Don’t be sorry about that, truly.”

She turned to Cadash. “Unfortunately, I can’t go with you on this trip. But Miranah wants to take you in one of our boats on to the village.”

“Thank you.”

Before they slept, Cadash and the Bull went to the barn to make arrangements for their mounts to remain there while they traveled. She tried to offer their hosts a few crowns for the favor, but they refused, her hand covered and forced closed, concealing the silver there.

————

The morning was still fog-shrouded when Miranah pushed them off the dock for the journey. The fog here had a different quality to it than on Seheron, looser; he remembered that now. It didn’t come in so unnaturally thick and fast he couldn’t see a foot in front of his face from one minute to the next, but instead stayed low, draping over the water and along the banks. It didn’t help as much as it should have.

He curled and uncurled his fist.

The boat was a large wooden fishing boat, painted white and yellow, with a distinctive tapered bow and stern and a flat bottom used to navigate through the more shallow marshes. It was easily big enough for all five of them, with a few low benches built near the front and a couple at the back at the metal rudder. In the middle of it was a simple, low-roofed wooden shelter holding supplies, and a mast for a single white and teal colored sail.

“We’ll catch the main river current now,” Miranah said. She had been using a punting pole, pressing off the sandy river bottom to avoid the rocks and chokes of water plants in a narrow neck of the river, but soon the boat started gaining momentum.

He and Dorian sat near the front of the boat with Sera, while Cadash chose to stay at the rudder with Miranah, an attempt to extract more information about local settlements and the people of the marshes.

Sera leaned deep over the side of the boat, knees on her seat, looking towards the direction they were traveling in and then down into the water.

“Careful, if you fall into the river, I should hate to be the one to go in after you,” Dorian said.

She laughed. “Like you would.”

Dorian snorted, and closed his eyes. “I think I would rather be in the water than on this boat.”

She flopped back onto the bench and poked at him with her toe. “Sick?”

The Bull could see a prickle of sweat along Dorian’s brow and the lack of color in his cheeks. He grabbed his waterskin from his pack and handed it over. Dorian’s answering smile was faint.

“Hey, you should drink this,” the Bull said. “And I got herbs you can chew that’ll help.”

“If you puke, just be sure you aim that way,” Sera said, waving her hand over the water, her tone glib but face concerned.

Dorian took a sip from the skin. “Well, this is cheery. Muddy water as far as you can see, nothing even resembling a city for days in any direction, and no real plan. And here we are, stuck on a _boat_.”

It tripped something at the base of the Bull’s skull, something he’s been wondering. ”Sera,” he said, scratching his chin. “I’ve been thinking. Seems kinda weird Cadash brought us out here.”

“What’s that?”

“Don’t know. Just—she’s got all that Corypheus shit going on. Then decides to drag us out to the ass end of Orlais?”

Sera looked down, like she was examining a scrape on one of her knuckles. “Yeah.”

“Like I said, seems weird.”

“How would I know?”

The Bull shrugged, a corner of his mouth lifting.

“Oh yeah, that,” she said, and made a gesture involving two fingers and her tongue.

She looked back to Cadash where she was in discussion with Miranah. “Right. She’s been talking about going to the Arbor Wilds. Something big, that. Has Leliana and Cullen gathering their people.”

“Corypheus.”

“Yeah. She’s worried. Won’t say it, but I just know,” Sera said. “So I’m worried.”

Dorian was quiet next to her. Still pale, he took more water into his mouth only to turn around and spit it back out.

The clouds obscuring the sun creeping across the sky. They slid through passages where the river squeezed between short cliffs and darkened the boat in shadow, before releasing them into wide flat marshlands where they could see storms in the distance.

The air was flecked with sand and smelled like salt and smoked dirt when the wind blew.

Dark started to fall, and they brought the boat as close to the shore as possible so it could be secured. Miranah pulled a large canvas sheet out of the boat to construct a shelter using spindly trees and the punting pole to protect them from the weather. They rolled out their bedrolls close together and huddled around a weak fire through the night.

————

After two more days of travel, they arrived at a village, boasting of a small stall marketplace and maybe two dozen houses along the banks of the river and stacked on low hills nearby. Several fishing boats were already tied to a series of docks.

Miranah was quiet as she fixed their own ropes.

“Something wrong?” the Bull asked Miranah when she finished tying the line.

She hesitated.

“There are families here who have a sort of—feud with some families in the part of the marsh I am from. Including mine,” she said.

The Bull nodded. “That going to be a problem for us?”

She shook her head, her dark eyes serious. She looked him in the eye. “Not a problem for Cadash or the rest of you, I don’t think, but that doesn’t mean I’m sure of my welcome.”

There were a handful of people outside, sitting on benches under roof overhangs, lighting the lanterns hanging next to their doors as the sun set. One building near the docks had a painted wooden tavern sign above their lantern, the image of a mug and a man wielding an axe.

And inside, the place was small but dry and hearth-warmed, serving cheap ale and hot food. Cadash ordered a round for all of them from the kind-faced elven barmaid who came around, and went to go inquire from the barkeep if they had rooms to rent.

There were, the Bull saw, a few looks from other patrons towards their party, a quiet word passed between drinking partners here and there. As he and Dorian and Sera sipped their ale, he suspected someone would get curious enough to come over.

Cadash slipped back into her chair. “They have no rooms. But he’ll take coin to let us sleep in the garden out back. There’s cover from the rain there.”

“That’ll work,” the Bull said.

Another round and a bowl of stew later, a couple young men took a seat at their table, one of them glancing at Miranah as they did. Neither of them looked older than twenty.

The Bull settled into a relaxed posture.

They asked a few questions, and Cadash stuck to the mercenary story as she carefully, smartly, elided why they were traveling with Miranah and where they were going. The two men laughed at her jokes, made their own bad ones, and bought them more ale. The foam fell over the sides of their mugs, into the grooves on the table.

More wood was put on the fire. The change came quickly.

The younger looking of the two, smooth-faced and thin-limbed, turned his head to Miranah and looked her straight in the eyes, and the Bull saw from where he sat the shift in the boy’s arm indicating a hand on the dagger at his side. In his face, the barbed combination of too much alcohol and the acidic arrogance of youth.

Cadash brought one hand to her own sword.

Across the room where she was flirting with a few of the barmaids, including the girl who served them their drinks, Sera’s loud giggle cut off and she fell silent. He could feel her eyes on them.

“You’re the sister of Luc, aren’t you?” The man directed his question to Miranah.

“I don’t have a brother,” she replied. “My cousin is called Luc.”

“But you’re of that family. You sell cloth, dyed the colors of that scarf on your head,” he said, leaning towards her. “Cheap shit.”

She stiffened, and touched her head covering, as if she forgot she was wearing it until it was pointed out. She put a hand on the table. “Cheap?”

“They say the dye runs out into the river as soon as it gets wet.”

“You lie.”

The man still had a hand to his dagger, shoulders high, foot tapping.

There was enough space between the table and the man’s gut that if the Bull gave it a hard push, it would catch him at the lower ribs. He probably wouldn’t have the momentum to crack them, but enough to knock the guy’s arm back from his weapon and shake him. Enough time for the Bull to stand, get a hand on his neck, press his face to the wood. If he made him bleed, his blood would run into the grooves of the table too.

“I don’t,” he hissed. “Your family is nothing here, don’t you know?”

“And you are a nothing who thinks going once to Val Foret with his father means he matters.” She stood, both hands on the table now. She rolled her eyes. “My family is as respected as yours. You think you’re better?”

The young man pulled his dagger and at that, Cadash made an annoyed noise. It had been a long day and the Bull could tell she wasn’t inclined to shed blood in a tavern over cloth trading, over some feud belonging to others, and before anyone else moved, she put her blade to his shoulder. The point rested two inches from his throat. There was a commotion from the direction of the bar, a call and the slam of a glass, but her gaze didn’t waver.

“Are we done here?” she asked.

The Bull stretched his arms over his head in feigned nonchalance. “Need a hand, boss?”

She smiled. “No, I think we’re good. You’re leaving?”

“Fine, we’ll go,” the young man gritted out, and stood from the table and away from the tip of Cadash’s sword.

————

The garden behind the tavern faced the river, with its vegetable patch and metal-roofed shed the barkeep unlocked for them, and they spread their bedrolls and blankets out inside, barrels of ale pushed to the walls and sacks of grain in the corner. Stairs on one side of the yard led to the sandy riverbank and docks.

It was very dark when the Bull found Dorian down those stairs a couple hours later, watching the water sluggishly slide by from the dock. Clouds concealed most of the stars overhead.

Behind him, yellow light crept around the curtains in the windows of the houses set on the hill, patterns reflected onto the river. It reminded the Bull the time he’d ended up in Antiva City for a job, the buildings stacked on those cliffs facing the harbor, the city’s heartbeat. It wasn’t much different here, really.

He made an inquiring noise when Dorian glanced over, made room for the Bull next to him.

“I’ve a feeling those young men are looking for trouble at this tavern every night,” he said.

The Bull quirked a grin. “Something familiar there?” The dark of the night, of where they were standing, made it easy to step closer to Dorian. He put a hand low on his hip.

“Any trouble I may find in taverns _now_ is irrelevant,” Dorian said with a pointed look. Turning towards him, he touched a hand to the Bull’s bicep. “But yes, when I was younger. It’s a certain kind of frustration, feeling angry and stuck. The want for more to do.”

“That what you think it is for them?”

“Maybe.”

“And back in Tevinter?”

“It was—rage of a kind. The expectations of my parents, the Circle.” He laughed, dry. “Meaningless.”

“Meaningless?”

“Quite literally. The man—the future _magister_ —they wanted me to be wasn’t one who actually did much. Except have the name Pavus and be impressive to everyone else as I became what was expected.”

The Bull traced the line of the conversation, not totally unfamiliar.

“So trouble in taverns?”

“Among other places. And it all crumbled more, as I was told to pretend those with a tenth of my talent were worthy of respect, as who I am was—” he stopped. “Well, you know.”

The Bull nodded, his fingers curved into the leather beneath them.

“Or—that’s not completely true,” Dorian continued. “When I was working with Alexius, there was something to admire there. It was different.”

“You needed to feel like shit mattered before, it didn’t. That’s why.”

“I suppose so. And antipathy towards with my parents and the bloody whole of Tevinter, but yes, we’ll say that.”

“They aren’t mutually exclusive.” The Bull shifted, to take some weight off his braced ankle. His hand slipped further around Dorian. “You walked away from Tevinter, though.”

“That doesn’t mean—you really can’t understand. Were you ever upset about your lack of choices under the Qun?”

“It wasn’t like that.” Because for him, his conception of himself, the place where he slotted into the world—it never would have occurred to him to see himself as a person without choices. The Qun’s choices for him, his purpose, was the person he was. Even the morning when he stood in a doorway and imagined letting someone get that split-second, a knife buried in his chest to the hilt; it didn’t feel like it was his to make, to take.

“No, I suppose it wasn’t. They make sure to get rid of that possibility early.”

The Bull’s jaw tensed. It was a well-worn source of scraping between them. “It’s better in Tevinter? We know what magisters do with their choices.”

Dorian snorted, stepping out of reach. “I’m angry every day about the state of my homeland. You _know_ that.”

That was true too, for as much as Dorian could defend fucking Tevinter, or the idea of it. The Bull kept any anger drawn tight into shapes he understood, only letting it out when he could be sure it would be safe and useful. He had to; he knew what would happen. He remembered the heavy heat of Seheron, blood smeared on his face. A horn held in his hand, bits of skin still attached. He didn’t remember much else about that day.

But Dorian let his own anger abrade him all the time, messy lines that spilled everywhere. It was the flint to iron that drove him. And it always made the Bull want to touch, to put his mouth to his neck, not even in a desire to soothe really, but something that felt even baser than that.

“Even if I went and got a seat in the magisterium, help rule a rotting country.” Dorian paced, his boots loud against the wood. “What would that make me?”

“A magister.” He could hear the tone of his own voice, frustration leaking into it. He could sense the fragile understructure to the conversation, words being spoken sideways around it.

Dorian could, too. “And you’re Tal-Vashoth. Not even part of the Qun anymore.”

It felt like an exposed nerve flicked.

“Tell me, Iron Bull, does putting _the_ in front of your name make it easier? Maybe a part of you that’s a thing, a part of you that isn’t.”

The Bull shook his head. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I mean, does it make it easier to square the things you do with the choices you want to make, think you should make?” Dorian stared at him. The distance across the dock felt far. “Which part fucks me, I wonder?”

“Isn’t that why you come to my bed? I thought that did it for you.”

Dorian looked away. In the low light, the Bull couldn’t see his expression as clearly as he wanted; all he could do was read the rigid line that was Dorian’s back, the set and slant of his shoulders. Did he think the Bull didn’t notice that when he came to him late at night after a few rounds downstairs, Dorian always, always liked the article? It fell off his tongue, part of the point, part of appeal, why this even started in the first place. _Like you see us as this forbidden, terrible thing, and you're inclined to do the forbidden._ The Bull offered to let him explore that and it was a good time, even if the Bull felt—whatever it is he feels.

The quicksand shifting of new parameters. “Is this about what Sera said the other day?” the Bull asked, rubbing his brow above his eyepatch. His head was starting to pound and his ankle was aching. He felt fumbling again, unfamiliar.

He didn’t think Dorian was going to acknowledge the question. “Which thing? About piss, or?” He shook his head, backed up a few steps. “I hope the tavern is still serving. I need another drink,” he said, before taking the steps two at a time.

————

More days passed on the river. On the fourth morning, the Bull woke to find Miranah standing in the shallows, water to mid-calf, her loose pants rolled up to reveal her brown knees. She was quiet most of time, but it wasn’t until after the tavern evening a crack started to appear, and what was there, under the silence—a kind of roiling agitation. Now, he could see it in her face when she looked back at him.

“Iron Bull?” She held her hand up, shading her eyes from the glare of the rising sun.

“Yeah?” He walked over to her.

“You might want to wake Cadash. You see that?”

He looked where she was pointing, near a fork in the river. A shock of red and purple and green braided rope hung from an arrow in a tree.

“Is that—?”

“Those are the colors of Luna’s family, the missing woman.”

“Could they have put it there when passing through?”

She shook her head. “It’s unlikely they came this way. My guess? She left it herself.”

————

When they got closer to the marker, the Bull and Sera jumped out of the boat to grab it and check for any footprints before wading back. All they saw were the charred remains of a fire that looked days old.

After that, they were silent with their eyes to the banks on each side of the river until a flash a movement, the sound of a person taking off in the other direction, in a grove of trees set them grabbing for their weapons. Whoever it was disappeared behind an outcropping of rock on higher ground.

Miranah steered the boat into a cove a little further down the river where it was hidden from both the rest of the shore and the river itself. Tying it off, they had to scramble upwards, up rocky river cliffs, to get to land. The Bull stood in the boat as each woman went up, gripping rough handholds and digging their feet into the barest of broken-stone divots.

Next went Dorian and he put a hand on the Bull’s shoulder as he braced a foot on the rock to hoist himself up from the rocking boat. The Bull put one hand lightly to the back of his thigh for support, and kept it there until it slid off as he climbed.

Moving over the land, they fanned out so they could easily take cover behind rocks and clumps of trees as they walked, as they looked to the ground, to the grasses, to the dirt. It wasn’t long before tracks were seen, signs of a dash from the river to further in.

The land dropped away into a wide swampy valley where they lost the trail. They all got low as the moved along the edge, and the smallest of rustling of the rushes indicated there was someone below.

They found an area where the rock crumbled away to form a makeshift path into the flattest part of the valley. Cadash led them down, and into the tall grasses nearly to her shoulders. She indicated to the Bull to go one way with Dorian and Sera. She and Miranah went the other. She touched her mouth briefly, two quick taps, _quiet, quiet_.

The Bull softened his footsteps as much as possible to move through the greenery, turned his body so he created as little disturbance as possible to not give away their position. Sera with her quick steps went ahead of them. City feet grown adept at this in the last two years.

She gestured for them to stop, disappeared in just a couple more steps.

They stopped by a tree pushing up through the thick rushes, got low again. Dorian crouched next to him, balancing himself with a quick hand to the Bull’s leg before pulling it away. The mud felt uneven and mushy, water oozing up around the edges of his boots.

The Bull’s heart started beating hard. His breath felt like a scrape in his throat as he tried to bring more air in his lungs.

The ground was too wet; the grasses brushed his shoulders, his horns. From their huddled position, it grew over their heads, framing the clouds above when the Bull looked up. Sharp blades against the grey. Sweat trickled down his neck, under his arms. Again and again, he tried to breathe. His fist curled.

It was too quiet. He couldn’t seem to get oriented to where their target might be, where Cadash was, where Sera went—

He tried not to think about Seheron here. He tried to not think about things in those jungles, about a dreadnought burning in a sea that almost matched the sky, the sound of it in his ears. Sand stuck to his boots. The air felt soupy-thick.

He looked at Dorian’s face, at the place where his moustache was messy. There was uneven stubble along his jaw; a droplet of sweat rolled from behind his ear, into his collar. He reached out, laid a hand on the Bull’s side, as if he was trying to maintain his balance. He let it rest there.

A high whistling, shatter-loud, came a split second before the sound of running through the grass. It was the signal Cadash always used with them in the field.

They ran towards the sound.

He felt the cracking hum in the air as Dorian cast a barrier around them. Cadash’s call came again, straight ahead from where they were. And then Sera's, a curse and a yell, just as the Bull and Dorian reached a clearing that smelled of smashed sweet rushes and blood.

Cadash had her shield up, trying to deflect two attackers with double daggers as they spun around her. She bashed her shield into one’s face, catching him on his cheekbone and snapping his head back. Blood ran from his nose.

Lining up her shot to hit a mage who had taken cover behind a boulder, Sera let out noises of frustration every time her arrow didn’t hit its mark. Next to her, Miranah was trying to pick off archers around the perimeter of the area, including one that was guarding a young woman on the ground with a bloody bandage around her arm arm and shoulder. She was reaching for a loose rock just out of her reach.

The Bull pulled his axe from his back and ran in to relieve the pressure for Cadash, breath still coming too hard, too fast. The sea still in his ears. The closest fight turned his attention from her to him, taking a wild slash at him.

He deflected with the side of his axe blade and pushed back, hard, knocking the attacker down and causing him to lose one of his blades. He rolled away, and sprung to his feet, feinted to the Bull’s side, right in his blind spot.

He started to turn quickly to avoid getting a dagger to the ribs.

The Bull heard the distinct blowing roar of one of Dorian’s fire spells before he even finished turning around, and Dorian’s Tevene swear. The man screamed.

There was a thunk, the sound of a skull hitting the dirt hard, Cadash’s sword pinning the other guy there as he tried to get away.

“Bull, Dorian,” she shouted and pointed to the woman on the ground, rock now in hand, struggling with the man standing over her. He had a heel to her chest as she tried to pull herself up.

The Bull was over there in several big strides, and he felt another one of Dorian’s barriers go over him right as the attacker whirled around and tried to put a blade into the Bull’s gut, scoring his skin below his ribs and raising a prickled red line of blood. Dorian threw a spell that missed, ricocheting off a rock and disintegrating over their shoulders.

The thump of Dorian’s boots drew closer, and the attacker reacted, taking a swipe across Dorian’s chest and mostly missing when Dorian jumped backwards, the blade grazing close.

With the roar in his arteries, in his ears, the Bull used the distraction, pulled his axe back and took one controlled clean swing through the attacker’s side, red running the haft of his weapon, and unfurling across the chest of the man’s green tunic. He fell to his knees and then into his own blood. It was quiet.

The Bull knelt down next to the woman, right onto his shit knee, cradled aching in the soft earth.

Her face was red and her breath came in great gasps. The rock dropped from her hand into the sandy mud she was sitting in.

“You okay?” he asked.

“I’m alright, I think,” she said, sitting up fully, her hand going to her wrapped shoulder. She grimaced before her face crumpled a little, her mouth quivering and looking like she was trying to swallow the threat of tears. “Miranah—”

Miranah dropped to her own knees and embraced her, kissed her cheek, put a hand to her hair. “Luna.”

Cadash came over after going through the packs and pockets of the dead. “Are there injuries?”

The Bull looked around, at the various cut and bruises they now sported, coated with layer of marsh mud.

“We’re good, boss,” he said.

Getting them all back to the boat took time, with Miranah and the Bull bracing either side of Luna to get her out of the valley basin. Dorian and Sera limped behind, and Cadash held a piece of cloth to a cut across her cheek.

When they got back to the river, Miranah went to get the boat and they washed the worst of the mud off their faces and hands as bright white lightning flashed in the distance.

————

Back on the water, Cadash pulled a blanket from her pack and draped it over Luna’s shoulders. “Can you tell us what happened?”

Luna wiped her hands across her cheeks. “That night—the night of the fires, I helped my family get out of the house. But when I went around the back, to get our horse, someone was trying to get inside. I fought with him. I recognized him.”

Cadash exchanged a look with the Bull.

“Who was he?”

“A young man who traveled through a couple weeks before. Tevinter. He stayed with my brother for a time and we gave him supplies before he was on his way.”

The Bull rubbed his jaw. It made sense. The Venatori send an agent in, he gets to know the villagers, and earns their trust. Doesn’t explain why he set the fires, though. Next to him, Dorian shifted.

Luna adjusted the position of her arm, grimacing. “We thought that was the end, until that night.” He came back with a half dozen others I’d never seen before. I followed when they ran, and tracked them for days. They discovered me near where you found us. Three days ago.”

“They were keeping you alive?”

“For now maybe. The Tevinter left two days ago. He wasn’t among those you killed.”

“You think they were waiting for orders from him?” Dorian asked.

She nodded. “Yeah, he seemed like a leader or something.”

“What did they take from your family?”

“I didn’t see everything, so I don’t know. But they had some of my father’s papers, mostly trade records from when he used to go to Serault. His letters. I have no idea what interest they are to any stranger.”

Cadash’s face was troubled. “Is there anything else? Where he might have gone?”

“I heard them mention a village called Jaune Fleur. Maybe there?” she said, shaking her head. “But that’s all I know.”

She was quiet then and looked towards Miranah at the rudder.

“I’m glad to be alive,” she said. “My family has gone to the village of my father’s cousin. I was scared I would never see them again.”

“No,” Cadash said, putting a hand to her tense ones. “We’ll take you there. You’ll see them again.”

The Bull saw her hands relax, and she turned her head to hide her tears from them.

————

Later, Cadash went to go discuss their course with Miranah, and Sera took up a perch on the raised shelter, wrapping the small cuts on her hands. The Bull and Dorian sat with Luna.

She stared at the passing banks, the bleached bone-white trees free of their bark on the shore, skeletons left there by storms and winds and time.

She resolutely didn’t look at Miranah again. The Bull offered her something to eat, pieces of dried fruit she just held cradled in her hand.

“You in pain?” he asked her.

She gave a weak smile. “Stab wound in my shoulder went deep. Hurts every time I move my damn arm. Up my neck and into my chest. It needs to be cleaned.”

She paused. “Miranah is good at handling wounds.” Her laugh was sour.

Dorian’s eyebrows went up. His voice was kind. “You two know each other well.”

She looked back to the shore again. “Yes. Very well. Or we used to.”

“I see,” Dorian said. He glanced at the Bull.

“I didn’t expect to see her, and it’s—shit, everything is just kinda shit.” She sighed. “Now it all hurts worse.”

She fell silent again after that, and they just sat quietly with her, making sure she ate the fruit still in her hand.

————

After a few hours on the river, they came to a settlement, just a couple houses set above the river on a plateaued peninsula. The late afternoon was cloudy, but the storm that had threatened earlier stayed over their shoulder, paused just out of reach.

They tied off on the sturdy, well-made dock and went up the stairs. The buildings were set in haphazard fashion, a house here, a squat stone outbuilding there, around an open space in the center with a large fire pit and benches. Brightly-colored laundry was pinned to lines strung between the houses. A young woman, a small child playing in the grass at her feet, clipped wet clothing from a basket to one of the lines.

Miranah and Luna went to speak with an old woman sitting in front of one of the homes, mending in her hand. When they returned, they were smiling.

“We’re welcome to camp here. There is a stream and watering hole near, just a few minutes walk where we can clean ourselves. And they’ll have food for us later,” Miranah said.

Cadash took from them some clean linens the woman provided, along with herb poultices for their wounds. Then the four of them headed in the direction of the stream, to wash the cracked mud and dried blood that still clung to them.

When they found it, it was clean smelling and quick flowing, a stream several feet deep that fell a short way over some rocks in a wide, clear pool just downhill from where they were standing. Swamp cypresses mostly shielded it from the approaching path. There was a sigh, a loosening in the air around them the Bull could feel.

Sera and Cadash dropped their packs, and Sera wriggled out of her shoes to stick her toes in the stream.

A frog jumped from a nearby rock into the water by her feet, sending a spray of water onto her pants. She jumped and let out a noise that sounded a lot like a squeak, as Cadash stifled a laugh into her sleeve. Sera stuck her tongue out, and Cadash just laughed again and gave her a look full of a secret sort of tenderness.

As the Bull and Dorian headed down to the pool, there was the sound of a splash, followed by Sera swearing at the cold water and the frog and the frog’s mother.

The surface of the watering hole was moving from the water hitting it, ripples that fanned out and crashed into each other. The full size of it was larger than the Bull expected, fed from an underground spring as well as the stream above.

The Bull took his axe from his back, half-sitting on a large boulder as undid the strap to remove his harness from his shoulder. Dorian put his pack down next to his, took a spot next to him.

Dorian groaned a little a he reached across his chest for the first buckle holding his armor on. He looked at the dirt under his nails, stuck in the space between his skin and the short nail tips.

“In Minrathous, I once was given a tesserae coin for a party thrown by a magister’s son at their country estate,” he said, focused on his hands. “He was useless; I knew him since we were young. But he claimed the waters and well, the mud there had magical curative properties. I show up to find two dozen of the Imperium’s finest sons and daughters covered in it. Then someone was stabbed.”

“Sounds very Vint.”

“Slightly less blood than the average affair, but otherwise, yes,” Dorian said. He finished undoing the buckles on his chest and belt to remove the top part of his armor. “The whole thing was planned for the assassination. But he served a fine Antivan brandy, so the evening wasn’t a total loss.”

It was a ridiculous little story and made the Bull smile. Whatever Dorian might have felt about their words the other night, for now it was resting.

Dorian’s bare chest was brown in the weak afternoon light, the curve of his spine long as he bent to peel his leather leggings off. His movements were tired and slow, the aftermath of battle and those hours on the boat he hated. There were scratches on his arms, on his shoulder.

The Bull had never seen him exactly like this before: nude, battle wounded, mud still smudged on his neck, cock soft against his thigh, and none of it felt anything like he could have guessed, the comfort he saw in the very lines of Dorian’s body.

Heat spilled through the Bull, with its own sort of comfort. He stepped out of his trousers, watched as Dorian waded into the water.

“Fasta vass,” Dorian said, loud, and with a little hop as he went in further, the water to his waist. “Evil ancient magister, Venatori, demons of every sort—I’m still certain my demise will come in some frozen Orlesian river.”

Following him, the Bull felt his own smile. The water wasn’t nearly as cold as some of the places they’d had to bathe before. He remembered in particular one pond in the Hinterlands during one of their unending expeditions there in winter, eye-stinging and ball-cramping.

He scrubbed the water over his chest, cleaning away the marsh dirt and sweat and the blood that wasn’t all his. Washing away the fight. Washing away those moments before, the way they still clung to his mind.

Dorian retrieved the beige cake of plain soap he carried on the road, different from the kind he used back in Skyhold. Back in the water, he rubbed it over his arms. “I’ve been thinking about those Venatori.”

“Oh, yeah?”

He came closer to the Bull. “Those men we fought back there weren’t Tevinter.”

“No,” the Bull said. “Didn’t fight like Vints. Those daggers they carried were Nevarran; you can tell by the pattern of holes on the blade. What’d you see?”

“The mage with them. No mage trained at a Circle in the Imperium casts like that.”

“What do you think?”

Dorian turned to face him fully, sank a bit more into the water. “The man Luna knew, he’s Venatori. These other men? Just bandits hired with the promise of a cut or maybe a reward.”

“So he leaves and they expect him back. They have to keep Luna alive or lose payment. Until he decides he doesn’t need her.”

“They were fools who panicked when they saw us,” Dorian said. “If they hadn’t attacked and tried to dispose of their captive, the fight would’ve gone far differently.”

“Then he’s still out there. With another Venatori contact?”

“In that village I would imagine, the one she mentioned.”

“We find him, we find the stolen papers, we find the contact. See what the Venatori are doing out here at all.”

“Yes, and then we can depart for the relative comforts at home,” Dorian said, and then ducked his head in the cold water. When he came up, he ran the fingers of both hands through his hair. Droplets fell onto his shoulders. From this close, the Bull could see a faint yellow where his neck met his shoulder. He could remember the bruise it used to be, the shape of the Bull’s mouth.

Dorian set a hand on his arm. “Turn around, you brute. Your back looks as though you battled the mud and won by rolling in it several times.”

The Bull laughed. “Want to touch me?”

He groaned. “Ugh, no, it’s just—distracting.” He didn’t specify if he was referring to the mud or just his back, and the Bull bit down on the tease.

His touch was gentle, long passes of wet hands over the expanse of the Bull’s back.

The Bull let his chin drop a bit, stiffness inching out of his muscles. His body still felt wound tight, too tight; any giddy rush he usually got with the end of a fight absent. His mind kept working, going over the movements and steps of the battle, and his pulse would spike. He couldn’t shake it, like he couldn’t seem to shed the weird feeling the marshes kept at the base of his brain—a shade of light, a roll of fog, traces of smoke on the air, a ghost-memory of a version of himself here. Not even the Iron Bull yet, someone in between the Iron Bull and Hissrad.

He heard Dorian’s hands move through the water and then he brought them up again, across the Bull’s shoulders, along his ribs. He softly touched the Bull’s own shallow wound on his side.

“They got you.”

“Nah,” the Bull said. “It’s a scrape. I had forgotten it already.”

The mud was no doubt gone, but Dorian’s hands lingered. It was sexy, in that way that everything about Dorian and the things he did was sexy to the Bull, but it wasn’t a seduction. It was the touch of a comrade, a friend. But it also felt like the touch of a lover. There was a sweetness to it, and it both soothed him and brought a point to his messed up head, his confusion.

After they got out of the water and dried off, he slipped into clean trousers from his pack. Dorian dressed while the Bull sat back on the boulder to tend to his wound, putting some of the poultice on it, smelling of crushed elfroot and dawn lotus and tea leaves.

He looked up to see Dorian watching him. “Before the fight began, there was something wrong.”

“Wrong?”

“With you, I mean.”

He remembered the hand to his side as they crouched by that tree. “Just weird thoughts, I guess.”

Dorian slid a piece of leather home on his chest, adjusting the metal. He nodded, walking over to the Bull.

He put a hand to the Bull’s face. “I can see the muscle ticking in your jaw, just here.”

He hadn’t even realized his face was still so tense. Dorian put two fingers at the hinge of the Bull’s jaw, before pressing hard. The surprise of it had the Bull’s mouth falling open, relieving the clench of his teeth.

“It has happened to you before?”

“No,” the Bull said, but that—that was a lie. He wasn’t sure if it was even a useful one.

He exhaled, picked a new direction. “The last days on Seheron, when I first came to Orlais. I hadn’t thought about it in a long time but, uh, it happened once after I went Tal-Vashoth,” he said. “Now here. I don’t know.”

Dorian nodded and spread his fingers, pressed again at his jaw, hard enough this time to tilt his head. His thumb ran down his face, tickled the corner of the Bull’s mouth. The muscle that ran up his neck to his jaw went loose. Dorian’s fingers pressed further along his jaw, hand cupping it, as the touch became a kind of a grasp.

He tried to think of something to say, now feeling off balance in a totally different way. “You saved my ass back there.”

“With that man with the blades? No, I think you would’ve had him,” Dorian replied.

“Maybe. But you had him quicker.”

“I didn’t want to give him more time.”

He wasn’t surprised Dorian saw that the guy could’ve had the jump on the Bull. Learning to fight with Dorian up close had been an exercise in trust at first, a sort of trust having more to do with Cadash than anything else. But once you feel someone at your back so many times, you start to know they are going to be there. 

“Thanks, then,” the Bull said.

Dorian gave a quiet smile, his nail scratching against the Bull’s jaw when he pulled his hand away.  

“I learned that spell three years before the other students in the Circle—that particular one, at least—even among those who had an aptitude for fire magic. I thought it unimpressive. Wanted to learn more advanced work. Using it in battle was theoretical.”

“Seems to work pretty good, though.”

“Yes, I—coming south changed all of that.” His gaze was like a weighted stone to the center of the Bull’s breastbone, and he saw the way Dorian’s lips pressed closed.

From up the hill and out of sight came a loud whistle. “Oi, you lot covered up down there?”

“Yeah,” the Bull bellowed up in the direction of her voice.

Sera appeared on the rocks at the top of the waterfall, hair wet and wearing a long tunic over her leggings. She perched right where it dropped a few feet into the deepest part of the pool. She tossed a small pebble into the water below her.

Then with a shriek that sounded a lot like the word _piss_ , she jumped from the rocks into the pool and came up laughing.

“You could have smashed in your head,” Dorian said.

“No, I wouldn’t have,” Sera said from where she was treading water. She blew a stream of water out in his direction.

“I need a drink,” Dorian said, under his breath, but with humor to it.

“Well, c’mon then. Let’s see if they’ve got wine here. I need to get her some too, mood she’s in,” Sera said, waving her hand back the way she came, indicating Cadash.

“Mood?” Dorian asked.

Sera rolled her eyes. “You want to ask her about it yourself?”

“Maybe the wine first.”

————

That night, the storm arrived. Leaving the next morning, Miranah and Luna set canvas across the rigging of the boat so it created a kind of tent, securing it on the sides to protect them from from the worst of the rain. Movements efficient, and with their spirits light, speaking to their experience with it.

Steady, fat drops came down from a black-grey sky all morning as they traveled. Sera and Cadash sat in the gloom under the canvas with Luna, while Miranah controlled the rudder when necessary as the current picked up and up with the heavy rain and rising water levels. Pulled with the storm, into terrain darker and rockier, thick tangles of marsh plants at the shorelines.

The Bull sat at the mouth of the canvas by the bow of the boat, watching the rain fall and keeping his eyes open to the banks, to the water, for things that needed to be seen. It was sometimes a fucking wall of water before it slowed enough to make the bends in the river visible.

Miranah would call to him, and he would yell back. Left to avoid those partially submerged rocks, right to keep following the river.

Dorian came and sat with him there, knees brushing against his with the undulations of the current, with the swing of the boat under them. He looked wan, and probably felt like shit.

After a few hours, he rested his entire lower leg pressed to the Bull, as the rain and splatter from the river soaked their skin and clothes.

————

It was still raining when they reached the village of Jaune Fleur, with no flowers visible anywhere except for the one painted on the tavern sign.

Cadash slapped her hand on the table as she sat down. “They have rooms for us, three if we want.”

“Please tell me you paid the man,” Dorian said.

She nodded, taking a sip of her drink. “I did. There’s even a hearth in each room.”

“I may well weep with joy.”

The Bull laughed. A real bed and a warm fire sounded damn good to him right now, too. The wet weather had been bothering his knee all day and now that night was here, the soreness settled into his bones.

A serving girl came around with a tray to trade their empty glasses for full ones, the points of her ears peeking out from her blonde hair. After she was done serving them, she took a cloth to the other tables.

The Bull knew Cadash had been hoping there would be enough people drinking to ask around to get information that could help them pick up a lead for the Venatori they were tracking, but it didn’t seem likely tonight. The hour was very late and the room was mostly empty, with only a couple of sole drinkers chatting with the barman as they lingered over the dregs of their ale. Even the fire was low.

Their party was spread around two small tables, The Bull and Dorian taking one in a corner, watching the room. Cadash, Sera, and Miranah sat at another closer to the fire, all of them slowing drying off.

“I must say,” Dorian said, holding his glass up. The fire danced off the uneven blown glass and deep red of the liquid inside. “The wine is more potent than I expected out here.”

“Yeah, they manage to get pretty good stuff,” the Bull said. “First time I ever had Orlesian wine was out in the marshes.”

Dorian looked surprised. “No, not really?”

“Sure,” he said, shrugging. “Before I was assigned to Orlais, only alcohol I knew was marass-lok, and that’s—not like drinking in the south. Different thing completely. First night here, they gave me wine with dinner and then kept pouring.”

“I take it that was new for you.”

“Yeah, you could say that. Overwhelming, kinda,”— _very_ , the unfamiliar reshaping of a world for him. “They helped me along, having me try what I wanted, asking what I liked.”

He’d been curious, but in the way of a child pressing their finger slowly to their first gifted blade to see when it would hurt. The edges of fear that came with all these choices, these new experiences, soothed by the order of lines on a page each night, reports crafted.

“And you liked the wine?

“The wine was good. I drank casks of it.”

Dorian faced the fire, not looking at him, but the Bull could still see the curve of his cheek as he smiled.

“I can just imagine it,” Dorian said, sly. “Rather put you on your ass, did it?”

He laughed. “Shit yeah, more than once.”

Dorian smiled into his glass, but set it down slowly. His hand traced over the rim of it. Sera laughed loudly at the their table as Cadash looked pleased, and continued on with her story.

“It was all part of your cover for the Qun?” Dorian asked, his voice razor-precise.

The Bull shifted, a knot settling in his gut without him knowing exactly why. “Sure. I had to be enough like a local to get them to trust me, to gather information. The fact I ended up liking it helped.”

“You learned you liked it.”

He wasn’t sure what distinction Dorian was trying to make there. “Yeah, I guess.”

Dorian tilted his glass slowly so he held it at an angle to the table, the wine slowly sliding around the inside of the glass, clinging to the insides as the press of gravity asserted itself, forced it level.

The Bull watched him, and thought of rivers.

————

The fire was banked when the Bull and Dorian entered their rented room. It held only a bed, more narrow than the one the Bull slept on in Skyhold, and a table with a pitcher on it, pushed to the wall under the small window. The covering on the bed was woven with yellow stripes.

Rain hit the windowpane, a steady percussion. But between them, neither said anything. The Bull was very aware of Dorian, the details of him, the things that still lingered in the spaces between, sticky on the very air. He thought Dorian was still angry from that night on the docks. He just wasn’t sure if all because of him.

Dorian lit the candles on the table.

“I feel I should tell you,” he started, his back to the Bull. “Maybe it’s just the fact we’re chasing Venatori again, maybe it’s the fact—” he stopped, fingers restless on the table. The Bull could only see how his elbow moved, but heard the _tap-tap_ of his fingers on the surface. “Do you remeber asking me if—what happened was because of what Sera said?”

“Yeah, I remember,” the Bull said. He put his axe in a corner, took a seat on the bed to remove his leg brace. He needed to warm his knee up or it would ended up bothering him for days. “That why you’re pissed at me?”

Dorian turned around. “I’m not.”

“You sure?”

He made a frustrated noise. “Well, not completely at least. When we talked about Tevinter—it feels close here, for all we’re in another stinking southern swamp.”

“Maybe it isn’t out there, then.”

“You think I don’t know that?” Dorian said. “And you? You’ve mentioned the past a dozen times in half as many days.”

“What are you trying to put on me?” the Bull said. “Look, come here.”

Suspicion in his face, Dorian came closer when he motioned to the spot on the bed next to him, but he didn’t sit. His eyes were on the hand the Bull was using to massage his knee through his trousers.

“You want to know what I think?”

“If you must,” Dorian sighed. The Bull couldn’t stop his smile at that.

“Tevinter was shit to you, your family was, all of it, but I also think coming south made you realize part of what was shit about it was the way it put blinders on you, like the metal ones the antaam build into the masks their horses wear in battle.”

“The _irony_.” With a sneer in his voice.

The Bull stretched out his fingers, looked at them. “I know.”

That pulled Dorian up short. He looked away before he spoke. “I said to you, that’s a difference between the things you do—”

“I remember.”

“Downstairs, you said you learned how to make choices here in the marsh.”

That wasn’t exactly what he said—the Bull hadn’t thought of it as a lesson until now, the things he had learned beyond just whether or not he liked southern wine, that secret-deep confusion at the questions they asked; he’d looked for the movement of their eyebrows, a twitch of a lip, to see if which he was supposed to say he liked when they asked. It was what he did because that’s what he did.

“Something has been wrong since we got here,” Dorian said, watching him. “Not just before battle, not just right after either.”

He shrugged. He didn’t know what to say; he couldn’t pretend that wasn’t true. For all the show Dorian would put on about his distance from other people, it wasn’t the whole truth of it either; he noticed all the time, noticed even more than people gave him credit for.

“When I was here before, my life was still—you say I learned how to make choices, but that’s—” the Bull said, clearing his throat. “It _was_ for the Qun.”

“And now it’s not.”

The Bull flinched again, like he thought he maybe did when Dorian said it before, like he does every time Cadash or anyone else does, even when it doesn’t show on his face.

Dorian voice was soft. “You were able to make that choice.”

“I don’t really know.”

“What?”

“I try to remember when I blew that horn; it happened so fast. Sometimes I think that was what I wanted, sometimes I think it was what Cadash wanted; she did it, and that makes me feel—” It felt like an ugly thing to think. What the Qun demanded, what Cadash wanted, what was needed—it wasn’t certainty or grief or guilt he felt in those moments, but gut-deep panic the second before.

“No, that’s not what I meant. You’d been choosing long before that.” Still so soft, too soft. “You always let people choose, on the battlefield, how you fuck them—but your own choices, those are harder, the person you are because of them—”

Except the image of himself feels as unsure, that same ghost-memory, sometimes as it did the first time he was in the marshes, when he wasn’t Hissrad anymore, but this time he both is and isn’t The Iron Bull as he was. Before the Storm Coast, before coming to marshes, before all of this, he would have said he knew who he was, what he was for.

“Come on, Dorian” the Bull said. The lack of a single candle burning into the night while he wrote orderly lines, report after report, organized for his dead drops, felt acute. He focused on his knee, moved his hand over the muscle again.

“My apologies; maybe it’s not my place to to push,” Dorian said, and then let the quiet stretch for a moment, and then he started unbuckling his armor. The Bull could smell the still-damp leather as he took it off. He wasn’t sure if Dorian had said anything the Bull didn’t know, hadn’t thought himself at times; he should be sure.

“What you said earlier, being here, working with Cadash, it has put things in a certain focus I didn’t—” he started. “Going back to Tevinter after this, what would that even mean? Petty power struggles and drowning myself in wine and _nothing_ else?”

“You’re scared,” the Bull said, digging his thumb into the side of his own kneecap, a blooming pain that soothed more than it should. “You really think that would happen?”

Dorian looked at him, like he thought he should argue it, argue what the Bull said, argue _something_. “I—I don’t know. All I keep thinking about is that Cadash will be facing Corypheus before long, and one must start to think of an after.”

The Bull knew; they never seemed to stop coming when he least expected it. After Seheron. After the Qun.

“I suppose we both have our choices. The Inquisition will end, our lives most likely diverging once more with it,” Dorian said, his voice, eyes, everything feeling like that glass tipped to an angle, an unsustainable precipice. The Bull, for his part, felt like the liquid moving and quivering as it tried to right itself. The conversation had swung in a direction he hadn’t seen coming.

He was too fucking tired, his knee hurting too much, the cold and fog and wet too far into his bones to understand what he saw in Dorian’s face, what he wanted.

When he looked up again, Dorian was staring at the narrow bed. His gaze wandered back over to him, to his hand on his leg. “Your knee?”

He shrugged. “Yeah, started after the fight and then—the weather.”

Dorian came over, slid a finger under the edge of the shoulder harness the Bull still wore, brought his other hand to strap. The Bull didn’t move as Dorian stripped it off. And then, slowly slowly, Dorian leaned down and kissed the Bull, quick and dizzy. He pulled away.

“Go to sleep, Bull.”

He put his head to the pillow and closed his eye. He started when he felt something hot get slipped along his leg—a warming brick from the hearth, wrapped in it the soft cotton cloth Dorian carried to wipe his face after shaving.

He drifted off with Dorian sitting up in bed next to him. Every so often he felt Dorian’s hand along his shoulder, on his upper arm, gripping and then loosening again.

————

When the Bull woke, it was quiet. The rain had stopped and there was muted dawn light coming through the glass.

Dorian was still asleep next to him, his bare chest pressed to the Bull’s side. It was warm in the room and in the bed, the heat trapped by the blanket over them, caught in the barest spaces between their bodies. Dorian’s mouth was soft, slack and open a little bit. With every exhale, the Bull could feel it on his skin.

He had an ache at the base of his throat, down to the center of him. It was a feeling he was starting to get used to. And it was only for Dorian. It was for the way his laugh could soften and spread through a tavern, a bedroom, vibrating in the Bull’s chest—for the wild want of him, for the way he surprised the Bull, a feeling that came with his own kind of learning—the ways lovers change, for the faint lines at the corners of Dorian’s eyes deeper now than they were two years ago, how even their differences became something familiar. This feeling had a name, the Bull knew, the desire for more and to give—

He touched Dorian’s shoulder.

Dorian started to shake off his own sleep, slowly; his body melting more into the Bull’s side before he pulled away.

————

Out on the docks a few hours later, a grizzled fisherman sitting on a barrel smoking a pipe waved them over. His hair was long, and his fingers yellow.

He looked Dorian up and down. “Your accent. Tevinter?” His own was thick Orlesian.

“It is.”

“Huh,” he said, with a long pull. “You lot are passing through left and right just lately.”

This caught Cadash’s attention. She furrowed her brow, looked at the Bull.

“Other folks from Tevinter?” she asked.

The man shrugged, considered them for a few beats. “Had one living here for a bit. Passed through with a merchant boat and stayed. Then, y’know, another showed up a few days ago. Next morning both were gone. Stole a boat and broke into one of storerooms over there.” He pointed with his pipe to a series of small buildings built in a clean row near the docks.

“They take something?” the Bull asked.

“Supplies and such. And strange, a few logbooks of the goods that changed hands here.”

The Bull scratched his neck. More stolen merchants records. He just wasn’t sure what use they were for the Venatori, or what they were looking for.

As they stepped away, the Bull called back to the man. “Hey, the stolen boat—what color was it?”

“Blue. A beauty, too. Shame it’s gone.”

Their backs turned, Cadash spoke out of the corner of her mouth. “It was them.” Her expression was shuttered and serious. “It’s northwest to the village where Luna’s family is. We keep heading that way.”

————

The journey took most of the day. The rain didn’t start to fall again, but the effects of the storm were evident, the river swollen, and water surging over the banks into the sedges and trees. The light stayed cold, hiding behind the clouds.

The river opened into a large lake, and along the far shore sat the village, a row of docks and a few buildings right of the water’s edge. As they got closer, the Bull saw it faced the head of another river. The village spread back from there, with more stone and wood buildings following it.

A small crowd was gathered near the docks watching their approach.

Luna yelled out when they got close, calling for her mother. A woman started to cry and waved a colorful handkerchief over her head.

As they pulled the boat in, the volume of the villagers rose, sounds of excitement and relief and gratitude. Luna didn’t wait until they were even fully docked before jumping over the edge into the shallow water, turning her leggings dark when she ran through it. She reached solid ground, and fell into the woman’s arms.

“Luna,” the woman cried, tears on her face. “You’ve come back safe.”

Someone shouted praise to Andraste as they embraced.

————

The village was too small for a real tavern, but one of the local widows rented out rooms in her home now that her children were grown and keeping their own households. She invited them to stay there, free of charge, and Cadash accepted the two rooms.

The wine started flowing among those milling around the village center, consisting of a garden and an open communal cooking pit, as the clouds split overhead, revealing the last of a red and gold sunset. The evening air was fragrant, the green of rain-trampled leaves and the suggestion of blooms opening after the storm.

Two older women built a large fire in the pit, with coals piled along the bottom and pieces of driftwood and soft dried marsh grasses on top to get the fire burning high. Young men drug large tables out from several of the houses, so to give a place to prep food and sit.

They put the food to the fire when the sky went blue-purple and the stars started to show themselves.

Miranah came over to Cadash and the Bull, handed each of them a glass of wine in hammered metal goblets.

“For you,” she said. There was less weight to her shoulders than he’s ever seen. “When families are reunited here, we tend to celebrate like this. To share this expresses the joy of Luna’s family.”

“And your own?” the Bull asked.

She ducked her head. “Yes, truly, more joy than I can say. Gratitude, too.”

“You and Luna work it out?”

She smiled at him, wiped a discreet tear from her cheek. “I love her and she, me. We have that."

————

The night went on with a flow of wine and marsh fish steamed with bog rosemary and a thick rabbit stew served to whoever chose to join them. Several villagers brought out instruments for the occasion; a duo on fiddle and a drum led on fast-paced Orlesian tavern songs, with a young girl on a galoubet pipe joining in on the local songs of the marshes, her tone high and fluttering on the air like a bird.

The Bull drank his watered wine slowly, savoring, laughing with the villagers as they told their stories of lost loves and legends of King Roux, the axe-wielding leader who declared independence for Nahashin from Val Royeaux in the Glory Age. In the tale, the Orlesians who came to take it back couldn’t find them at first, had to look and look deep into the marshes. The rivers moved beneath them.

An old woman with gray hair cut close to her head and papery, translucent skin on her hands came by dropped long strings of dried river grass with bright painted clay and shell beads over each of their heads, first Cadash and Sera, and then the Bull, who had duck from even his sitting position as she carefully pulled it over his horns.

The Bull watched across the fire as Dorian accepted his own necklace. Their gaze caught.

The music swelled as the villagers danced, arms hooked together. Patterns made by their bodies. He saw Miranah’s hands around Luna’s waist, cheeks pressed together as they spun under a sky painted with light, exuberant with stars.

————

Dorian came over and sat down on the half-log bench with the Bull later when others got up to dance. He sipped his drink. He had the urge to put an arm across Dorian’s back, a gesture familiar—an arm around Krem after a good clean fight, with a stranger in tavern after a chugged ale—but reinvented when matched to the feelings he had for Dorian.

Flying bugs circled the fire, attracted to the light, in and out of the smoke as they talked. Their conversation wandered.

“Dorian, about last night—” the Bull said. “You apologized for pushing; you didn’t.”

“I did, a little. But I’m maybe not as sorry as the apology would imply.”

The Bull laughed. “That so?”

Dorian looked at him, took a sip of his wine slowly, throat working as the Bull watched. “I’ll admit, I was worried, and I’ve been—let’s just say you aren’t the only one that that has been put off-balance.”

The Bull made a thoughtful noise. “I’ve been thinking about what you said, about me talking about the past,” he said. “This place was—like I was learning a whole new life here. Being here again, don’t know, especially since becoming Tal-Vashoth, it feels kinda like that again.”

Like the person he was becoming in Nahashin years ago was also who he was now, learning those same things.

Sera and Cadash were caught in the throng of dancers. Sera’s hands were firmly on Cadash’s shoulders as she tried to guide her in the steps, and even in the dark, even from yards away, the Bull could see the blush on her face.

Sera put a hand to each of Cadash’s cheeks and kissed her swiftly on the mouth, and as she pulled away, they were both were laughing into it. When Sera noticed them watching, she pulled them both into the dance, an arm hooked through each of theirs as she led them, before using momentum to push Dorian towards the Bull before she slipped away.

Dorian closed his hands around the Bull’s arms, just above his elbow. His bottom lip arched with his smile.

The Bull half expected him to pull away, to put a distance between them just in case. Instead, he slid his hands up to the Bull’s shoulders, fingers curving into the muscle there. He tilted his head close and brushed a kiss over his cheek. The Bull could smell the sugar and wine on his breath.

The song came to a finish, ending as the drum faded out and the fiddle took the lead, long low notes into the night air—a man’s voice singing, a song of the quiet shock of new love.

————

The next morning, they awoke very early to a knocking on the door.

“Bull, Dorian,” Cadash called. “Get out here. We need to go.”

The night before, when they fucked, it was a frantic, joyful thing—the Bull’s cock pressed into Dorian, fingers curled over his hips and on his thighs. The beaded necklaces around their necks making noises as they kissed, the bits of ceramic and shell hitting each other, and later, wrapped around their hands as their clothes made it to the floor. The string fragile enough to pull apart and break with a pull. Instead, it ended up around Dorian’s wrists, loose and messy. That, like a secret between them, that knowledge of just a bend of the wrist would release him but still, Dorian didn’t—meaning made in his hands.

The Bull wrapped an oiled hand around Dorian’s swollen cock, opened his mouth on his shoulder.  And Dorian brought his legs up around him, digging a heel in just below his ass—an insistent imperative of more movement, more friction. A demand the Bull usually felt in his hands, a question always answered. _Harder, now, now._

He came right after Dorian did, pressing Dorian’s hands to the bed, pressing his face to Dorian’s neck. Groaning into his skin.

When he tugged the string away afterwards, the beads fell over the pillow.

They made it out to the docks, dressed and washed as much as they could, as Sera and Cadash were helping Miranah while she worked the ropes to open the sail. The morning sun was pale and clear.

“I got a raven,” Cadash said. “From some of Leliana’s agents. They’re south of here, near a keep called Garotte—”

“How Orlesian.”

“Yeah, well. They started traveling north some days ago. Then, day before yesterday, met one Briala’s spies in a tavern.”

“I told you the way she was chatting me up was funny, I _told_ you,” Sera said to her. Cadash grinned.

“The elven barmaids,” the Bull said.

“That’s right,” Cadash said. “Briala’s been tracking these Venatori as well, and keeping Leliana informed. The raven this morning said they’ve been spotted, ahead of us, still traveling. The wind is with us this morning, so we leave now.”

“Will it be possible to catch up, in this boat?” Dorian asked.

“We’re gonna find out,” Miranah called to him, and tied off the last rope for the sail with a quick knot.

————

The strong tailwind pushed their speed faster than they’d ever traveled. Miranah took the rudder, to make sure they stayed course west. She’d been silent since Luna had come down to the stocks to say goodbye, whispering in her ear and slipping a bright piece of cloth into her hand.

“I could come with you,” Luna had said.

“No, stay with your family. I’ll try to get back what they took.”

“And then?”

“Home. But back here first,” Miranah exhaled. “Here first.”

The rest of them sat near the front, quiet for their own reasons as they watched and waited, for any movement in the stillness of the landscape around them.

It came after only a few hours: a boat, pulled onto shore. An attempt had been made to hide it behind rocks and cover it with leaves and marsh plants pulled straight from the ground, dirt still clinging to their spidery roots. But the blue paint on it was unmistakeable.

Miranah brought the boat in, and she, the Bull, Dorian, and Cadash pulled it onto the sandy beach because there was no good place to tie it off, while Sera clambered up onto a tall boulder to look around.

“Oi, there—looks like an old building? Big one, too,” Sera said. “What’s it doing out here?”

Cadash looked at Miranah, who shook her head. “I’ve no idea what it is.”

When they got closer, it looked to be a villa, old-looking, the outer walls having distinctive Tevinter architecture but the house itself appeared redone in the Orlesian style in later centuries. Larger than anything they’d seen so far, it was several stories with a sloping roof and large windows of Serault glass. A chateau dropped in the middle of one of the rockiest, most desolate parts of the swamp.

The front gate built into the outer wall was left open.

“Guess they’re not expecting visitors,” the Bull said.

“Well, that’s dumb,” Cadash said.

They went into the courtyard, weapons drawn, cracked tiles under their feet. The door was locked when she tried it.

She looked to the Bull. His boot stomped through the old, half-rotted wood with ease, breaking the lock and leaving it in splinters. They didn’t step inside right away, keeping to each side of the door. They listened for any response to the noise they just made, and they heard it—a scrambling of feet, a rush of voices.

More than the two the Bull expected. But less than ten, if he had to guess.

Cadash yanked on Sera’s sleeve, pulling her back as a blast of lightning magic ripped through the remaining wood still on the frame and flew past them.

“Well. We’ve found the Venatori,” Dorian said.

“You sure?” Cadash yelled.

Another lightning blast flew past. “Quite sure, yes."

“We need to find another way in,” she said. She signaled for them to head around to the side of the house.

“I’ll stay here and cover this door,” Miranah said, slipping her bow from her back.

“You have this?”

“Yeah, go.”

Cadash nodded, disappearing around the corner of the other side.

The Bull, Dorian, and Sera crept along the wall until they reached a narrow window. She broke the glass with a rock and a swift push of her foot, to get at the latch inside. She slid it open to reveal a sitting room. It had been recently used, the white cloths that had once covered the furniture were in a heap in the corner, the dust on the tables looked as if hands had tried to wipe it away.

It was too small for the Bull to get through, so Sera slipped in, and pointed further down the house. He and Dorian moved slowly, trying to stay out of the windows’ sightlines as much as possible. Plants grew up the sides of the walls which looked like they would crumble away with a touch.

He wondered if Cadash was in.

Ten feet from where they were, Sera suddenly appeared, her head peeking out of a side door. She waved an arm at them.

It was dark and smelled like mold. They were close to the back of the house now, and these rooms were undisturbed when the Bull looked into them, stinking jewel-toned rugs and still air. Cobwebs were thick in the corners, and the only footprints on the dusty floor were their own.

They crept towards the front door. There was a chance they could still corner the mages who had cast the lightning spell, but when they got there, it was just an empty foyer full of light from the place where the door used to be, scattered on the pale limestone flooring.

Cadash’s low whistle came, and Sera made a noise in response. Cadash appeared at the top of the stairway to one side of the front hall.

“Did you see anyone?” she asked.

“Not yet,” Dorian said. “You?”

She shook her head. “I climbed up to a balcony and came in upstairs. All the bedrooms are empty.”

Miranah appeared in the doorway. “They didn’t come this way either.” She let out a groan of frustration.

“So they were here, and there’s no sign of them running out front. Doesn’t look like they came through the back of the house at all. And no sign of them of them up, so—” the Bull said, and tapped the head of his axe to the ground.

Cadash’s eyes widened. “That leaves down.”

————

They found the entrance to the cellar and went down the rickety wooden stairs into a large room, with walls and floors covered in more stone tile. There was a collection of barrels to one side of the room and an old rack for drying fish, but the rest was empty. A door was set into the far wall, just barely visible in the light from the torch Cadash carried.

“There,” Dorian said.

It was a risk, going in blind like this, but it wasn’t like they had many better options. Cadash pushed on first, with the Bull just behind her to take the front. Dorian, Sera, and Miranah followed.

The chamber beyond was cut straight into the rock underneath the house.

“This is old,” the Bull said, looking. There was metal hammered into the rock to provide support, sculpted pieces with points. Probably Tevinter. “Older than parts of the house, for sure.”

“This might be why the villa was built here at all,” Dorian said.

There was an opening here that went to a cave. Cadash signaled for them to keep going, into what looked like a network of cave tunnels. “They had an escape route. Let’s see where it leads.”

The only light they had was the flickering of Cadash’s hand lantern, casting a dancing glow onto the walls as they walked. The tunnel narrowed at certain points, enough they had to go single-file, and they walked through brackish water up to their ankles in other places. The air was stale and oppressive, and smelled like burning peat and deep mushrooms.

The Bull kept his breathing measured and slow. There was a lot that could go wrong; they didn’t know if they were on the right trail, the water underfoot made the Bull suspect these tunnels were sometimes filled with water. He wondered if the reason it was dry now was a seasonal thing or a kind of mechanism that could be controlled, leaving them to all drown here if activated. Or they could get cornered in here if the Venatori came from both directions. He felt the tension filling the space in between them.

He could hear Dorian cursing Cadash behind him.

She pushed on.

Finally, after turning a bend and maybe a half hour down in the tunnels, the Bull could smell fresh air and a small line of pale sunlight. There was an opening up an incline just ahead of them. He could hear the wind over the mouth of it and just under that, the rush of the river.

They broke into a run then, spilling out into the cool marsh air, right at some dilapidated old docks. The Bull did a quick count at what he saw—Venatori, more than he’d thought. He’d made a miscalculation before. These Venatori were fifteen strong and trying to ready a group of boats.

There was a loud cry when they were spotted. The Bull heard the crack of glass when Cadash dropped the lantern.

“Cover!” Cadash screamed as a ball of flame flew towards her. Dodging it, she dove behind a rocky outcropping, the the Bull and Dorian with her.

“That’s a shitload of Venatori, boss.”

“Yeah, Bull.”

“Any ideas?” Dorian said.

“Can you keep a barrier on us?”

He nodded. “I can certainly try.”

His face was more sure than his words. The Bull didn’t touch him like he wanted to.

“Now?” Cadash asked.

“Now.”

The Bull and Cadash ran from their hiding spot just as Dorian cast the barrier. She raised her shield to block another lightning blast, as they reached the Venatori on the dock closest to them. A fire spell sliced sliced through the sail on one of their boats, the cloth curling as it burned, folding into itself, black.

He counted the steps of the guy coming at him: one, two, three, and brought his axe around to hit him with the flat of the wide great axe blade, knocking him out with a crunch. He fell from the dock back into one of the boats, sending it rocking. Another Venatori—with one foot on the dock and one in the boat—lost his balance as it moved and when he fell forward, managed to grab Cadash by her ankle. He struggled to pull his dagger from its sheath, and she kicked at him and brought her sword down to try to knock it away. There was a clang as their blades hit, and then she sunk hers into his chest. His grip on her leg went slack.

The Bull saw Sera catch one of the Venatori on the other dock in the neck, the arrow sticking there, and both of his hands went around it like he wanted to pull it out. He fell back into the water, and she let out a whoop from her perch on higher ground, ducking behind a rock again as fireballs headed to her.

The Bull landed his axe in the shoulder of the next attacker. He felt Dorian’s barrier around him falter. He looked and saw Dorian had positioned himself so he could cover Cadash and the Bull with barriers and still aim his fire spells at what Venatori he could, causing enough of a distraction for Sera and Miranah to take them down with well-timed arrows. Their eyes met for a moment, fleeting contact like the brush of Dorian’s hand down his back in the dark.

The barrier went strong again.

With a yell, the Bull ran to other dock to get at the other Venatori. Cadash dashed forward, running her sword through one attacker’s gut and bringing her shield to hit him hard enough to slide his limp body from it.

A lightning bolt sizzled through the air, hitting the Bull along his arm, a cutting burn through his skin. It fucking stung, and he swung his axe in reflective response, across the Venatori’s midsection as one of Dorian’s fireballs flew past the Bull’s shoulders and hit the attacker.

They’d cut down at least half of them, and he and Cadash jumped right into one of the boats to get another one. The Venatori tried to stab at them with her short sword, using her height advantage to go for Cadash’s neck, but there was no place for her to go as they closed in, and Cadash finished her off, blood splattering over her armor.

The sound of Sera swearing caught the Bull’s attention, and he saw several of the Venatori who’d been on the furthest dock start running down the riverbank. She was shooting arrow after arrow, the twang of the bow strings punctuating each of her curses, trying to get them before they were out of range. One arrow plunged into an arm of one of the fleeing men, but didn’t slow him down.

He and Cadash tried to take out the few left, who’d been taking cover in the boats and behind crates to avoid Miranah’s arrows and exchange spells with Dorian.

The Bull crushed through the wood of a couple crates to destroy one hiding spot. He nearly got a sphere of white-hot, loud lightning to his face for it, but ducked and swung hard.

“What the fuck?” he heard Cadash shout, pulling her sword out of a dead Venatori.

A couple who’d tried to escape were now running back towards them. The Bull clipped one in the shoulder as he ran past, tripping him, holding him down with his ace pushed to the guy’s chest.

“Running from something?” he asked. The Venatori pointed to the hill just behind them.

They all turned to look.

Coming along the banks of the river from the other direction, a handful of armed Inquisition troops behind her, was Cassandra. On the river, a boat with more troops and filled with supplies was being rowed against the current.

She had two Venatori in ropes with sword points to their backs.

Cadash, the Bull, and Dorian all groaned.

“Where did you come from?” Cadash asked. “And you couldn’t have shown up earlier?”

She blew a strand of sweaty hair from her red face.

Cassandra inclined her head. “My apologies, Inquisitor.”

————

After tying up the last of the Venatori and searching the docks, they all went back to the abandoned villa—above ground this time.

On the walk, Cadash questioned Cassandra.

“I’d been in Val Royeaux for just a few days when Briala sent me a message. It said she had spies here and it might be wise for me to head north, approach Nahashin from that way,” Cassandra said. “Leliana knew this, of course. Even though she had not felt it necessary to inform me until then.”

Her tone made it clear what she thought of that choice.

“I think it has less to do with you and more with me right now,” Cadash said, making a move along gesture with her hand.

Cassandra nodded. “I went along the Imperial Highway northward with troops before turning southwest around Churneau. We bypassed some of the worst terrain to reach the marshes that way. When we got word of the direction you were headed from Leliana’s scouts, it wasn’t difficult to intercept you here. Admittedly, I did not know we would be walking into battle.”

Cadash, Dorian, and Cassandra questioned the captured Venatori in the courtyard while Sera, Miranah, and the Bull searched through the rooms they hadn’t had a chance to earlier. They found the missing papers and other small valuables, probably just stuff to be sold. The Bull was standing in the doorway of one of the front parlors when Dorian and Cassandra came back into the entry hall.

“What are we going to do with them now?” Dorian asked. “Take them back to Skyhold?”

“We’ll take them to Val Royeaux. Orlais has, unofficially, asked to take custody of them. They have their own questions.”

“You mean Briala.”

“I mean—yes, the Marquise of the Dales. She _was_ instrumental in their capture. And in fact, us suspecting the Venatori at all. She made sure the first message about this reached Leliana.”

“They’ll disappear into Orlais, and anything they might know, that we could get—”

“They know nothing about Corypheus. And you must know I agree with you, but we have to be delicate right now,” Cassandra sighed.

“You want their troops, for the Arbor Wilds,” Dorian said.

“Yeah, that’s why,” Cadash said, from behind him as she stepped inside. He turned and faced her. “It might not be ideal, but I need Orlais right now. There’s a lot at stake.”

Dorian exhaled. “No, my apologies.”

“So what were they doing in the marshes?” the Bull asked from where he stood.

“Smuggling, mostly. Or attempting to. They suspected the locals of already transporting goods back and forth from Orlais to Tevinter,” Cadash said. “That’s why they stole the merchant records, looking for ties to Tevinter. The plan was infiltrate the marshes, collection information, and wait for the signal things needed to be moved."

“But why burn the village?”

“One of them got scared, got sloppy. He was afraid he was running out of time and couldn’t find the information he needed.”

“But they were wrong,” Dorian said. “There was no smuggling, no connection to Tevinter at all.”

“Explains why they set up in this place. Those caves were designed for moving goods.”

“I think so,” Cadash said, pulling on her glove. “Luckily they can’t do anymore damage. The lives here can go on as before.”

With the extra supplies Cassandra brought, they were able to set up something that resembled a real camp on a small rise next to the river, where it was sure to stay dry and the soldiers had a flat surface to set the tents and build a cooking fire. Cadash wanted to stay here at least a couple nights; there were ravens to be sent, wounds to be cared for, and plans to be made.

Around the campfire that evening, worn-out and quiet, they passed around a skin of wine one of the troops had brought and watched the sun disappear over the river. Between their bodies, Dorian ran two fingers over the Bull’s hand, leaning in a little more.

————

In the dark, the Bull and Dorian brought a torch down to the shores of the river, at the base of the rise down near where their boats were tied off. They moved gently with the current. There was a quiet to the night, to the clear, clean moonlight on the water.

It smelled of wet earth and fresh water. Dorian placed the torch on a rock and rubbed a hand to his brow.

“You still thinking about earlier? About those Venatori?” the Bull asked.

“About what Cadash said,” Dorian replied.

“You know Orlais is just gonna execute them.”

“Yes,” he said, running hand along the short hair growing out at the back of his neck. “That part I have no problem with, whatever they do. But there may be things they learn they won’t know what to do with.” He sighed.

“More than what you found out today?”

"Perhaps not,” Dorian conceded. “Perhaps I just—it means something to me the Venatori don’t succeed. It matters that we defeat Corypheus. And don’t die.” He took a step closer. “Then there’s this, I know— _this_ means something to me.” His eyes were tender and unsure.

And he turned to the Bull, put his hands on his chest. The first kiss was a soft press of lips. The second was fuller, a press of his tongue into the Bull’s mouth. “I’ve never—how you’ve made me feel,” Dorian murmured.

He cupped a hand to Dorian’s neck. This feeling had a name. _I’m in love with you_ , he thought.

“I don’t want to be apart from you,” Dorian said, whisper-soft.

The Bull bowed his head. “However this goes, you got me,” he said. He kissed Dorian’s jaw, touched his mouth to his neck, once and then again. Dorian shivered under his lips. “Those choices you talked about—well, I choose.” And that’s it, all he could say. He felt the wetness on his cheek.

He pushed Dorian gently into the rock, kissed him again and again, the dark folding around them. In this place where he once was and now came to be again, all ghost-memories of himself settled as he felt in his own skin—as he existed as the Iron Bull.

There, at the side of the river that would lead them back out of the marshes, the Bull took Dorian’s hand.


End file.
